146 THOUGHTS ON HUNTING 



times produce them again. The method which I use to stink an earth, 

 is as follows : Three pounds of sulphur and one pound of asafcetida are 

 boiled up together : matches are then made of brown paper, and lighted 

 in the holes, which are afterwards stopped very close. Earths that are 

 not used by badgers, may be stopped early, which will answer the same 

 purpose; but, where badgers frequent, it would be useless ; for they would 

 open them again. 



Badgers may be caught alive in sacks placed at the mouth of the 

 hole : setting traps for them would be dangerous, as you might catch 

 your foxes also : they may be caught by stinking them out of a great 

 earth, and afterwards following them to a smaller one, and digging them. 

 Your country requires a good terrier. I should prefer the black or 

 white terrier : some there are so like a fox, that awkward people frequently 

 mistake one for the other. If you like terriers to run with your pack, 

 large ones, at times, are useful ; but in an earth they do little good, as 

 they cannot always get up to a fox. You had better not enter a young 

 terrier at a badger. Young terriers have not the art of shifting like old 

 ones ; and, should they be good for anything, most probably will go up 

 boldly to him at once, and get themselves most terribly bitten : for this 

 reason, you should enter them at young foxes when you can. Before 

 I quit this subject I must mention an extraordinary instance of sagacity 

 in a bitch-fox that was digged out of an earth, with four young ones, and 

 brought in a sack upwards of twenty miles to a gentleman in my neigh- 

 bourhood, to be turned out the next day before his hounds. This fox, 

 weak as she must have been, ran in a straight line back again to her own 

 country, crossed two rivers, and was at last killed near to the earth out 

 of which she had been digged the day before. Foxes that are bred in 

 cliffs near the sea, seldom are known to ramble any great distance from 

 them : and sportsmen, who know the country where this fox was turned 

 out, will tell you, that there is not the least reason to think that she could 

 have had any knowledge of it. 



Besides the digging of foxes (by which method many young ones are 

 taken, and old ones destroyed), traps, etc., too often are fatal to them : 

 farmers for their lambs (which, by the bye, few foxes ever kill) ; gen- 

 tlemen for their game ; and old women for their poultry are their in- 

 veterate enemies. I must, however, give an instance of civility that I, 

 once met with from a farmer : The hounds had found, and were running 

 hard : the farmer came up in high spirits, and said, ' I hope, Sir, yo u 

 will kill him : he has done me much damage lately : he carried away all 

 my ducks last week. I would not gin him though too good a sportsman 

 for that.' So much for the honest farmer. 



In the country where I live, most of the gentlemen are sportsmen ; 

 and even those who are not, show every kind of attention to those who 



